A STUDENT branded a cheat after an A-Level exam leak was so determined to prove her critics wrong she re-sat and got an A*.

Former-Wanstead High School pupil Fabienne Ruttledge was “devastated” when she was disqualified from her final sociology exam last June.

The now 19-year-old was told she could only score 15 out of 90 on the paper after three of the questions were posted in a Whatsapp revision group she was in a few hours beforehand.

Miss Ruttledge, of Hereward Green, Loughton, insisted although she read the questions they did not give her an unfair advantage because she was already predicted an A*.

The teenager hit national headlines with her claims exam board AQA's penalty was unfair and could have cost her a place at Kent University to study law.

She said: “I didn’t get a very positive response from people I didn’t know on the internet – lots of them called me a cheater.

“But everyone I knew was really supportive and agreed I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

She ended up with a U (ungraded), bringing her overall sociology mark down to a C and final grades to ABC, instead of the AAA Kent were looking for.

Luckily the university still let her in, but she remained determined to silence her critics.

She added: “I wasn’t expecting to get in, but they accepted me on mitigating circumstances.

“They obviously agreed the whole thing was unfair and decided to give me a chance anyway.

“I was so happy, I had worked so hard for those two years and was really ready to go university, I didn’t want to take a gap year.

“But I saw that C grade and thought ‘that’s not fair, I don’t deserve that” and decided I wanted to re-sit almost straight away.”

Despite having to juggle three first year uni exams, Miss Ruttledge started revising for the sociology re-take after the Easter holidays in April.

Using her notes from last time she set aside one day a week to study sociology and went back to her old school in Redbridge Lane West to do the exam in June.

Last Thursday (August 17) she went back to Wanstead High to get her results and was astounded to find she had bagged an A*.

She said: “I was in complete shock, I didn’t expect to get an A* this time around, with my uni exams as well.

“But I’m glad I’ve proven myself.”

Asked why she felt the need to re-take the exam when she did not need to she said: “I didn’t want future employers to see a grade on my CV that doesn’t reflect my ability.

“Law is really competitive and I know people who have missed out on training contracts because of their A-Level grades.”

Miss Ruttledge says she is “loving” university life and hopes to go into commercial law when she graduates in 2019.